As you mentioned in your blog (http://blog.stabyourself.net/post/19083 ... in-numbers) that there have been over 700,000 downloads and server upload of about 3 TB, which is cool on the one hand, but (correct me if im wrong, not an IT specialist) isn't that much server load, and thus needs more expenses for the server?

If yes, I suggest releasing an additional torrent download, which would quickly spread through the many users.

Expenses aren't really a problem, and using torrents would be just another thing users would be forced to use.

Besides, we want to track downloads, and to track them using our current system (Google Analytics) we require users to open the download page and click the link since hot linking is prevented. Due to the release spike and direct linking to mirrors 343605 downloads were unaccounted.

Well okay, when I said expenses aren't a problem, I disregarded the fact that we used Amazon S3 for the release. Reliable, but incredibly expensive. Yeah, it would be a lot cheaper to ask for free mirroring, but organising file distribution 15 or so minutes from release when Mari0 was packaged would be a bit of a pain. S3 was an emergency solution when I realized at what rate the traffic was growing.

Well, you might loose some stats, true. But in te end the users would need to download the .torrent file from your site to trust it (which you could again count). Also you could still keep up normal download for those who are not that technophile.